CHAPTER 2-BRAHMS TAKES A WALK

Early one morning in the summer of 1865, Johannes Brahms went for a walk in the woods of the Black Forest and conceived the opening theme of his Horn Trio in E flat, op. 40. He later showed his friend Albert Dietrich the spot "on the wooded heights among the fir-trees" where the theme first came to him. As he told Dietrich, "I was walking along one morning and as I came to this spot the sun shone out and the subject immediately suggested itself."

Walking was a central part of Brahms' life, and he frequently used his walks to think through his musical ideas. For Brahms, walking became a metaphor for the compositional process itself - working through an idea was "[taking] it out walking." Brahms' daily schedule usually contained a morning stroll after coffee, and he especially cherished walks in natural settings. As a younger man, he had long looked forward to a walking tour along the Rhine, which he realized in 1853, and he enjoyed several similar walking tours over the course of his lifetime. He was known for a very healthy walking pace. Brahms would regularly spend his summers in rustic spots, where he could enjoy brisk jaunts surrounded by the natural world.

For several summers in the 1860's, the spot Brahms chose to visit was Lichtenthal, in the Black Forest near the spa town Baden-Baden. He first visited in 1862 with his dear friend Clara Schumann, who went to purchase a cottage there, and Brahms stayed with his friend Anton Rubinstein. Brahms was very happy with what he found in Lichtenthal, and returned repeatedly.

The summer of 1864 was a particularly productive time. Brahms, who found lodging at the Hotel Bären, was pleased to find himself in the company of many prominent musicians and artists, such as Turgenev, Anton Rubinstein, Johann Strauss, and two men who were to become dear friends - Hermann Levi and Julius Allgeyer. The combination of a beautiful natural environment and great company proved to be extremely conducive to Brahms’ compositional process - the summer of 1864 saw the completion of the Piano Quintet in F minor, op. 34, as well as substantial work on the second String Sextet and the 9 Songs on Texts of Platen and Daumer, op. 32.

When Brahms returned the following summer, he found accommodations that thrilled him. He rented an attic apartment from the widow Clara Becker, in a house he described quite alliteratively as "Das hübsche Haus auf dem Hügel" ("the pretty house on the hill"). In a letter to Bertha Faber, Brahms described his lodgings, writing that

Brahms expressed his happiness with his choice in a letter to Levi when he wrote "I came, saw and immediately took the first, best lodgings...It lies on a hill, and I look over all the mountains and paths from Lichtenthal to Baden." The apartment was also cheap, which put Brahms’ practical mind at rest. As he wrote to his father "I have found here a most wonderful dwelling and it is unbelievably inexpensive, so that I can enjoy the beautiful view without pangs of conscience." His lodgings consisted of a bedroom and another room whose blue wallpaper earned it the name "the Blue Room."

Although Brahms was very happy with his lodgings in the summer of 1865, something had occurred earlier in the year that gave him great sadness. In early February, 1865, he experienced for the first time a death in his immediate family with the passing of his mother, Christiane. A telegram from his brother Fritz brought him the news that she had suffered a stroke, informing him that "if you want to see our mother once again, come immediately." By the time Brahms arrived at Hamburg, Christiane was dead.

By all accounts, Christiane Brahms was a wonderful, kind woman and a great homemaker. Clara Schumann and Joachim raved about her cooking. She rarely said a bad word about anyone, and was always thinking of ways to help others. She was immensely proud of her son Johannes, and had a very special relationship with him.

As a child, Johannes had spent much of his free time alone with his mother, developing a particularly close bond with her. Even as an adult, Christiane always included him in her prayers, and she wrote to him that "you are always my first thought [in the morning]." She was known to break into tears when reading newspaper accounts of his successes.

The last few years of Christiane’s life were difficult. She was seventeen years older than her husband, Jakob, and as she aged tension developed. Brahms had done his best to keep his parents together, but when he visited in June of 1864 he had to agree that it was best for them to be apart, and he paid for his father to move into his own lodgings. The separation was difficult for Brahms, and the following letter, written in October 1864, shows how he tried to nurture his parents’ relationship.

Brahms was deeply affected by his mother's death. For the most part he retained his composure, taking care of the funeral arrangements and other business. His pain did show through on occasion, however. For example, a cellist named Josef Gänsbacher dropped by on Brahms unexpectedly and found a weeping Brahms practicing Bach on the piano. Continuing to play, Brahms told him about his mother’s death.

Brahms also expressed some of his grief to Clara Schumann, one of his oldest, dearest friends. On February 6th, he wrote to her that

Brahms wrote to Schumann again about his loss two weeks later, on February 20th.

Most of Brahms’ grief came out through his music. It was only a couple of months after Christiane's death that Brahms sent Clara two movements for chorus and orchestra that he described as part of a "German requiem." Although the death of Robert Schumann in 1856 was probably an influence in Brahms' decision to write a requiem, and although he had started some of the music before Christiane's death, Clara Schumann told Florence May that "we all think he wrote it in her memory, though he has never expressly said so."

In the year after his mother's death, the only other piece Brahms worked on besides the Requiem was the Horn Trio. As we shall see, his mother's presence can be found in several places in the trio, from the slow movement marked "mesto" ("sorrowful"), to the possibility that a theme that appears in the last two movements is based on a folk tune that Christiane taught Brahms as a child. It is possible that the loss of his mother, and Brahms' subsequent thoughts about his childhood, even helped determine the unusual instrumentation of the piece: horn, violin and piano are all instruments Brahms studied as a boy.

The first performance of the trio took place on November 28th, 1865 in Zürich with Brahms on piano, a violinist named Hegar and a hornist named Gläss. Brahms again performed it on December 7th of the same year in the foyer of the "Hoftheater" in Karlsruhe, in a private concert with the Ducal Orchestra members Mr. Strauss on violin and Mr. Segisser on horn. Brahms was very fond of the piece and performed it many more times. He also recommended it for performance by others, writing to Dietrich that "for a quartet evening I can with a good conscience recommend my horn trio." Clara Schumann also played the piece, and one of the more interesting early performances took place on March 26, 1867 with Hans von Bülow on piano, Leopold Abel on violin and the conductor Hans Richter on horn.

In the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung’s first two issues of 1867, Selmar Bagge, the journal’s editor since 1863, published his review of the trio. It was less than enthusiastic. George Gelles provides a good summary of the lengthy review.

Some evidence of differing public reactions to the piece can be found in descriptions of performances written by Brahms’ friends. In 1866 Clara Schumann wrote to Brahms that

On January 19, 1870 Schumann wrote in her diary that

On January 5, 1879, Theodor Billroth wrote to Brahms that

The trio was published in November of 1866 by Fritz Simrock, a horn player with whom Brahms performed the work in the same year. Simrock insisted that Brahms include a cello part as a substitute for the horn part, and Brahms conceded, although he was unhappy with how it sounded. He later became interested in the idea of using a viola in place of the horn, and a viola part was published in 1884. Brahms published a second edition of the trio in 1891.

The trio occupies a special place in Brahms’ output. Not only was it the first piece Brahms wrote after his mother’s death, but it was the last piece of chamber music Brahms was to write for eight years. It was also the last piece Brahms wrote before the German Requiem was to take him to a new level of fame and recognition. This puts the Horn Trio as the final piece Brahms wrote in what Geiringer considers Brahms’ second period.

The trio is undoubtedly one of the best pieces of tonal chamber music for horn. One of the more interesting aspects of the piece is that Brahms did not write it for the modern valve horn on which it is usually performed. Brahms wrote the trio for violin, piano and Waldhorn - natural horn. In the next chapter, we shall examine why Brahms made this decision.

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